Mike Ybarra – who spent nearly two decades at Microsoft and two years as head of Blizzard – has been highly critical of Xbox's recent decisions, including the decision to open up the brand's exclusives to hardware rivals, namely PlayStation and Nintendo.
Recently, Xbox president Sarah Bond described exclusives as “outdated” because “the biggest games in the world are available everywhere.” Bond mentions Fortnite, Roblox, Call of Duty and Minecraft as examples of multi-platforms.
Mixed messages
Xbox, being a console manufacturer, previously followed a strategy of releasing exclusive games on its consoles. But over the past year and a half, Xbox has been slowly porting its first-party games to the PlayStation 5, while publicly disavowing the practice of making games exclusive to one platform.
The reason for this seismic shift in attitude is simple — the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch have larger user bases than the Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox was trying to boost sales of its first-party games. However, this decision casts doubt on the future of Xbox hardware. Why would consumers buy an Xbox when they can get both companies' first-party games on the PlayStation?
“Someone go tell Nintendo that exclusives are obsolete,” Ybarra writes, in response to Bond's comments. Nintendo has been a dominant force in the console space for decades, solely because of its first-party games, which are not available on any other platform.
The Microsoft veteran thinks Xbox is directionless, as the company refuses to admit it can't be a hardware manufacturer releasing games on third-party platforms.
“Only an idiot would continue to make hardware when all the games are going (or going third party),” Ybarra complained. “To switch, they would have to go back to exclusives, make good hardware at a loss and strive to win the living room. That's not their strategy (which is good), but for some reason they just keep running in the middle, not being clear, doing more damage for no reason. Like I said a thousand times, get a clear strategy and rip off the patch and focus on execution with thousands of needles.”
Xbox becoming a glorified first-party publisher seems the most likely outcome of the company's latest strategy shift.
